Two actors appear as stars at two
rival theatres. They are equally talented, equally pleasing.
One advertises himself simply as a tragedian, under his
proper name - the other boasts that he is a prince, and
wears decorations presented by all the potentates of the
world, including the "King of the Cannibal Islands." He is
correctly set down as a "humbug," while this term is never
applied to the other actor.

****

Why? Not because he cheats or imposes
upon the public, for he does not, but because, as generally
understood, "humbug" consists in putting on glittering
appearances - outside show - novel expedients, by which to
suddenly arrest public attention, and attract the public eye
and ear.

****

An honest man who arrests public
attention will be called a "humbug,"' but he is not a
swindler or an impostor. If, however, after attracting
crowds of customers by his unique displays, a man foolishly
fails to give them a full equivalent for their money, they
never patronize him a second time, but they very properly
denounce him as a swindler, a cheat, an impostor; they do
not, however, call him a "humbug." He fails, not because he
advertises his wares in an outre manner, but because, after
attracting crowds of patrons, he stupidly and wickedly
cheats them.

P.T. Barnum--"Humbugs of the
World"

Barnum was the self-titled "Prince of Humbugs." He
was masterful at putting on (as he calls them) "glittering
appearances and novel expedients" to attract the public's
attention. There are small but crucial differences between
hoax, humbug, and out-and-out fraud, and Barnum tread
dangerously close to transgressing at times. Still, Barnum
was in the business of entertainment, and he always managed
to deliver entertainment value to his customers. Even those
who were tricked had to admit they had a good time in the
process, and that it was worth the money they had paid.

Scroll down to find out about some of Barnum's
best and most famous Humbugs. This list is by no means
complete!

In 1835, Barnum displayed Joice Heth, a
161 year old slave woman who was (supposedly) the nanny to
George Washington. This was a big hit for quite a while, and
Barnum took Joice Heth on tour. When sales began to flag in
Boston, he wrote an anonymous letter to the newspaper,
claiming that Heth wasn't a person at all, but a whale bone
and India rubber automaton. This caused a Joice Heth furor
again, as the people who had seen her previously wanted to
see if they'd been taken in, and the people who missed her
needed to see for themselves what the hubbub was all about.
Heth died of natural causes in 1836. Barnum staged a public
autopsy, and it was discovered that Heth could not have been
more than 80 years old. Barnum went one further, and then
suggested that Heth was still alive, that the woman that
died was not the real Joice Heth. This was Barnum's first
foray into show business, and he proved to be a natural
promoter. In his autobiography, Barnum claimed that he
believed Joice Heth to be exactly what he said, and that it
was he who was deceived.

The Fejee Mermaid was brought to Barnum's
attention by Moses Kimball, fellow showman from the Boston
Museum. A clever fabrication of a creature that had a fish's
body and tail with the breasts of an orangutan and the head
of a baboon, the Fejee Mermaid seemed like an astonishing
curiosity. Barnum leased the attraction from Kimball, and
then proceeded to put on some "novel expedients." He hired
Levi Lyman (who had helped Barnum exhibit Joice Heth) to
pose as a Dr. J. Griffin of the London Lyceum of Natural
History. "Griffin" gave a series of lectures, which resulted
in phenomenal box office business. Mermaid fever swept over
New York, and the mermaid was displayed at Barnum's museum
for over a month. The mermaid continued to bring in crowds
as it toured around the United States until it arrived in
South Carolina, where the crowds were incensed by the
obvious falseness of the mermaid and its display partner, an
actual duck-billed platypus. The mermaid was shipped back to
Barnum's museum, to sit on a high shelf in Barnum's office.
In later years, Barnum admitted that he was "not proud" of
his Mermaid antics. Despite his regrets, it made his
fortune. By the end of Mermaid fever, Barnum was the most
famous showman in America. The Peabody Museum (at Harvard)
owns a mermaid, but it is unclear as to whether it is
Barnum's, or one of a number of replicas exhibited by rival
showmen.

The Museum Gets a Facelift

When Barnum became proprietor of the
American Museum, the building was rather plain. Barnum aimed
to change all that. One night, after the museum had closed,
Barnum had a series of oval paintings installed in between
the windows of the museums upper floors. Ostriches, bears,
eagles, kangaroos, peacocks-- the paintings all promised
amazing sights on the inside. Barnum also added a large
revolving light (New York's first spotlight) that lit the
streets below, as well as fireworks, a rooftop garden and
fountain, and giant illuminated balloons. By transforming
the building from drab to droll, Barnum helped sales
enormously-- Barnum estimated that it added close to 20% in
sales per day.

The Brick Man

Barnum knew the power of mystery. An
unemployed man came to his museum and asked Barnum for a
job. Barnum handed the man five bricks and instructed him to
solemnly place the bricks in various places around the
outside of the museum. As he went from spot to spot, he was
to replace the brick at each spot with another one that he
was carrying. He was to answer no questions, speak to no
one, and seem to be deaf and dumb. Once an hour, he was to
enter the museum, walk right next to the ticket taker, seem
to pay the fee, and then proceed through the museum and out
the door. A crowd began to form, watching the man and
wondering what he was doing. Many of the crowds followed him
into the museum just to see what was going on. In fact, the
police had to ask Barnum to stop the man, because the crowds
that he was creating were stopping traffic.

Niagara Falls

Barnum's Museum was known for its
wonders. So when Barnum advertised that he had imported at
great expense a working model of Niagara Falls, people
rushed to see the amazing spectacle. They were a little
disappointed when they discovered that the model they had
been looking for was 18 inches tall! However, all of the
other interesting wonders at the museum made up for this
temporary setback.

Free Music

Barnum offered free music from the
Balcony of his museum. But he purposely hired bad musicians.
He wanted people to move into the Museum, where they could
take refuge from the awful music. This philosophy is
continued to this day at fast food franchise places like
McDonald's, which keeps the interior restaurants
artificially bright so that people will be less inclined to
dawdle. Barnum invented it!

The Grand Buffalo Hunt of Hoboken
(FREE!)

In 1843, Barnum bought a herd of scrawny
buffalo, and arranged for a FREE display of Buffalo hunting
in Hoboken NJ on August 31, Over 24,000 people from New York
came to see the fearsome buffalo, and were a little
surprised to see some underfed docile animals milling about.
The laughter and jeering of the crowds frightened the
uncooperative buffalo, who broke through the protective
fence and escaped into New Jersey's swamplands. Barnum had
kept his name off all the advertisements, but had made
secret deals with the ferry companies and the concession
stands. He ended up clearing over $3000 for the single
day.

Noted explorer John
C. Fremont had captured the
public's attention with his Sierra expeditions. Barnum
wanted to capitalize on Fremont's success. He had bought a
small maneless horse with wooly hair. Barnum displayed the
creature as an extraordinary nondescript (or new species)
that seemed to be part deer, camel, horse, buffalo, and
sheep. People flocked to see this new specimen which was
supposedly direct from California. Barnum later said "The
public appetite was craving something brought from Col.
Fremont. The community was absolutely famishing. They were
ravenous. They could have swallowed anything, and like a
good genius, I threw them, not a 'bone', but a bon-bon, and
they swallowed it in a single gulp."

General Tom Thumb (born Charles Stratton)
was a midget who literally increased Barnum's fortune
immensely. Barnum met Stratton when he was five years old,
and came upon the idea of displaying him as General Tom
Thumb. Barnum billed the boy as a prodigy of the age of 11
(when he was only 5) and taught the boy to dance and jig and
recite poetry and snippets of plays. Stratton did such a
great job that he wowed the throngs at Barnum's Museum, then
on tour around the United States, and even all of Europe. He
performed several times before President Lincoln, Queen
Victoria of England, Queen Isabella of Spain, King Leopold
of Belgium, and many other royal and important personages.
In 1863, Stratton married another midget (Lavinia Warren) at
Barnum's mansion in Bridgeport. Their wedding was celebrated
throughout the United States (they were guests of honor at a
reception hosted by President and Mrs. Lincoln.)

Smarting from his reputation as a Humbug
man, Barnum had the idea to bring some high culture to the
United States. In 1849, Barnum contracted with Swedish opera
singer to come to the United States and give 150 concerts
for the amazing sum of $1000 per concert (an unheard of sum
in those days.) And Barnum had never heard her sing! When
Jenny Lind asked him how he could hire her without hearing
her, Barnum replied "I have more faith in your reputation
than in my musical judgement." Barnum's uncanny ability to
gain publicity paid off, and when Jenny's ship arrived in
New York harbor (September 1850), she was already a
superstar. 30,000 people came to meet her boat, and not one
of them had heard her sing!. Rather than selling seats in
the usual manner, Barnum auctioned off the first few seats.
Jenny-mania was so extreme that the first man to purchase
the Jenny Lind tickets in New York (hat maker Genin) ended
up making a national name for himself and garnishing huge
amounts of publicity. In Providence, RI, one man paid $650
for the pleasure of hearing Jenny sing. Jenny gave a total
of 93 concerts in the states. Barnum paid her double the
contracted salary, plus all the expenses, and still cleared
over $700,000 in profits. He had convinced Americans that
they needed to hear opera.

Just months after Charles Darwin
published "The Origin of Species" (1860) Barnum began to
exhibit William Henry Johnson, a New Jersey native who was a
mildly retarded black microcephalic dwarf. The public had a
great interest in evolution, and Barnum touted Johnson as
"The Missing LInk."

"Is it a lower order of man? Or a higher
order of monkey? None can tell"

Johnson, who became known as Zip the
Pinhead, started out at $1.00 per day, but was so popular
with audiences that Barnum was soon paying him more. Barnum
and Johnson became good friends. Johnson became one of the
most famous freaks in the world, and displayed himself up
until his death in the 1920's.

The Cardiff Giant was not originally a
Barnum humbug. George Hull of Binghamton, NY, a cigar-maker,
was the original perpetrator. In 1869, workmen dug up a
petrified giant in Cardiff, NY that appeared to be from the
biblical race of giants. The body was over 10 feet tall and
weighed nearly 3000 lbs. Hull and conspirator/brother-in-law
Stub Newell displayed the body before an amazed public.
Sales were phenomenal. The hoax worked so well that Barnum
attempted to buy the Cardiff Giant from Hull and Newell for
$60,000. When they wouldn't sell, Barnum created his own
Cardiff Giant (made of wood) and declaimed Hull's as a hoax.
Hull took him to court, where the judge found for Barnum
(after all, it turned out it was a hoax-- and there were no
monetary damages to be had for telling the truth.)
Paradoxically, this whole incident resulted in one of
Barnum's most enduring claims to fame. Read the above links
to find out what!